XCF Promoter Doug Bland addresses "Rumble in Racetown" issues

As with any MMA event, the conclusion of the night leaves a collection of winners and losers.

Such was the case with Saturday night’s “XCF: Rumble in Racetown” in Daytona, Fla. Unfortunately, one of the losers was the event’s charity partner, the “Corey Hill Get Well Fund.”

While the XCF had committed to donate $1 from each stream purchased to the fund set up to assist injured UFC lightweight Corey Hill, technical difficulties prevented potential buyers from completing their transaction. XCF promoter Doug Bland today explained to MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) what went wrong and how he hopes to make it right.

“The streaming element obviously did not go as planned,” Bland said. “The third-party billing firm that was hired to handle the payment transactions dropped the ball and when people tried to register it would not let them do so. I was informed by the production staff after the first bout was already completed that it would be Monday before the software problem was fixed.”

When users followed a link from the XCF’s homepage to purchase the stream of “Rumble in Racetown,” they were taken to a website operated by EC Suite, LLC to process the payment. A software error on the site prevented potential buyers from processing their payments.

Bland said he had very little time to react.

“At that point we knew there was no possible way to collect funds for the stream,” Bland said. “So we had two options, not show the fights at all and disappoint all the fans who were logging in to watch the show or let everyone watch it for free.”

By forgoing all revenue for the event, the XCF was unable to follow through on their commitment to donating a portion of the proceeds to the “Corey Hill Get Well Fund.”

Despite the organization’s decision to allow the stream to be viewed for free, several observers noted that the XCF had received a large amount of media coverage due to their association with Corey Hill — an association in which the XCF would be unable to honor their end of the deal.

Bland addressed those critics.

“If anyone thinks this was some type of publicity stunt they are crazy,” Bland said. “We wanted nothing more than to help Corey Hill and his recovery as we were donating $1 off the top for every pay-per-view that was to be ordered. Just to host the live steam we had to purchase a new server, an HD decoder, hire a streaming engineer, production staff and the pay streaming user fees. Because of the mix up with the third party billing company XCF spent thousands of dollars to produce the show and did not collect one penny from the streaming.”

The free stream was delivered in a low-quality video format and with a distracting audible buzz throughout. Bland said he was disappointed with the event stream and hopes to make alternative arrangements for donations to the “Corey Hill Get Well Fund.”

“We are very disappointed with the outcome of the streaming campaign and are talking with the engineers now to see if there is a way we can have the bouts on some type of download purchase,” Bland said. “Once we get the details of that opportunity we are going to talk with (Gracie Tampa Chief Instructor) Rob Kahn and Corey and see how we can make him part of the financial end of it. We are also going to develop a plan to sell the remaining inventory ‘Rumble in Racetown event T-shirts, which featured all the fighters on the card, and tie Corey into that money as well.”

Fans who had planned on purchasing the event can also donate directly to the “Corey Hill Get Well Fund” on the Gracie Tampa’s official website.

A total of 26 fighters got their chance to shine on Saturday as part of UFC 190 at Rio de Janeiro’s HSBC Arena. Now that UFC 190 is in the books, it’s time to commence MMAjunkie’s “Three Stars” ceremony.

The man known for cranking submissions to the point of injury added eye-gouging to his repertoire. But is the controversy of Rousimar Palhares too essential to his bizarre, awful appeal for his employers to take any meaningful action against him?